"A review is not necessary simply because a value increased," Franklin County Auditor Michael Stinziano told property owners this summer. "The question is whether the Auditor's Appraised Value and the information we have about the property are accurate."

It's a fair point, and also a strange one to make out loud in a county where the average residential value just went up nine percent. Only a sliver of homeowners took him up on the offer to check. Franklin County has close to 500,000 parcels, and by early August, fewer than half of one percent of owners had requested a Property Value Review. Most people, it seems, either trusted the number or didn't know there was a window to question it.

That window closed on September 5, two days before this piece was written. If you own a Dublin home on the Franklin County side, your chance to sit down with the Auditor's office before December's final values go out has already passed for this cycle. If you own a Dublin home two miles away on the Delaware County side, you're on a different clock entirely, with a different relief mechanism, and a different set of rules about what protects you from a bigger bill.

That's the part the median price never tells you. "Dublin" is a single city on a map and a single line item on most home search sites, but it is not a single tax jurisdiction. It sits across two counties, and in 2026 those two counties are running two different valuation processes with two different sets of guardrails. A buyer comparing a $600,000 listing in Dublin to a similarly priced house in Powell or Hilliard is often comparing tax exposure without realizing the exposure itself depends on which side of an invisible county line the house happens to sit.

The Rollback Buried in Franklin County's Nine Percent

Franklin County's 2023 full reappraisal pushed residential values up an average of 43 percent, a number that's stuck in a lot of homeowners' memories. The 2026 triennial update, which relies on sales data rather than physical inspection, came in far gentler at roughly nine percent average residential increase, according to the county auditor's own reporting.

The instinct is to assume a nine percent value bump means a nine percent tax bump. It usually doesn't, and the reason is a state law most homeowners have never heard of: House Bill 920. HB 920 caps how much revenue most voted levies can collect even as property values climb, which means the millage rate gets rolled back to offset the increase. The county's own explainer points to what happened after the 2020 triennial update: residential values rose 20 percent countywide, but taxes actually collected on residential property rose just 2.57 percent.

That gap is the whole story on the Franklin County side of Dublin. Your new appraised value, mailed June 9, isn't the number that determines your bill. Your bill depends on how your specific parcel's value moved relative to everyone else's in your taxing district, because HB 920 is doing its rollback math against the pool, not against your house individually. Two Franklin County parcels that saw identical nine percent bumps can still land on different effective tax changes if their neighborhoods moved at different speeds.

None of this affects your 2026 payment. The new values hit your 2027 bill. If you missed the informal review, your next real chance to challenge the number is the formal Board of Revision complaint window, which opens January 1, 2027, and closes March 31, 2027, with no extensions.

The Inflation Credit That Skips Dublin's Own School District

Cross into the Delaware County slice of Dublin and the rules change shape entirely.

Delaware County Auditor George Kaitsa issued a public statement in January laying out how the county's 2026 tax reform would land differently depending on school district. Property owners in the Big Walnut, Buckeye Valley, and Delaware City school districts, he explained, will receive an "inflation tax credit" on their tax bills, because those districts sit at Ohio's statutory 20-mill floor, a threshold below which the state steps in to cap increases at the rate of inflation rather than the full value increase.

Property owners in the Olentangy, Dublin, and Westerville school districts do not get that credit. Kaitsa's statement is direct about why: those districts weren't at the 20-mill floor after the 2023 reappraisal, so the inflation-only cap simply doesn't apply to them. If your house falls inside Dublin City Schools territory on the Delaware County side, you're not shielded by the same brake protecting a Big Walnut or Delaware City household a few miles up the road. You're back on ordinary voted-levy math, the same rollback logic that governs the Franklin County side, just administered by a different county auditor on a different notice schedule.

This is easy to miss because the headline framing of Ohio's 2026 property tax reform is "relief is coming." That's true in Big Walnut. It's not automatically true for the Dublin school district itself, and a buyer who assumes every Delaware County levy got the same inflation cushion is working from an incomplete picture.

What Happens Between Now and Your Next Bill

Here's how the two clocks compare, side by side, for anyone trying to track where their own Dublin address sits.

The practical takeaway for anyone mid-search in Dublin right now: the county line isn't cosmetic. It changes which office you'd call if your value looks wrong, which calendar governs your appeal, and whether a particular tax relief program even applies to your specific school district.

What This Actually Means If You're Comparing Suburbs

If you're weighing Dublin against Powell, Hilliard, or another central Ohio suburb on the strength of a median price you saw somewhere, the number worth asking about next isn't the list price. It's which county the parcel sits in, which school district services it, and whether that district cleared or missed the 20-mill floor after the last full reappraisal. Two Dublin listings at the same price can carry different long-run tax trajectories, and that difference has nothing to do with square footage or lot size.

It's also a reason not to treat a scary headline about a 43 percent reappraisal jump as evidence of what's coming next. The mechanism built into Ohio's system, on both sides of the county line, is designed to decouple value growth from proportional tax growth. It doesn't always work perfectly for every household, but it's the reason a 9 percent value increase on the Franklin County side isn't landing as a 9 percent bill increase for most owners.

A Few Questions Worth Settling Before You Write an Offer

Does the county split affect anything besides property tax? Not directly for most transactions, but it's worth confirming which auditor's office holds your specific parcel record before closing, since that's also where your homestead exemption application and future Board of Revision filings would go.

If I already missed Franklin County's informal review, am I stuck until 2030? No. The formal Board of Revision complaint window for 2026 values opens January 1, 2027, and runs through March 31, 2027. It requires more documentation than the informal review, typically comparable sales or a professional appraisal, but it's still available.

Is one side of Dublin's county line objectively better for taxes? Not in a way that holds across every parcel. The mechanisms are different, not simply better or worse, and how they land depends on your specific district's levy history and floor status. That's a question worth running for your specific address rather than assuming from the general pattern.

If you're comparing Dublin properties across this line, or trying to understand what a specific address's tax trajectory looks like before you make an offer, that's exactly the kind of local detail worth a conversation before you write a number down. Keli M Fisher works these central Ohio suburbs address by address, not just by median.